Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney

Obama's call to culture war

PAUL RYAN, author of a controversial new Republican budget proposal, endorsed and actively campaigned with Mitt Romney in Wisconsin in the run-up to Mr Romney's primary victory there. On Tuesday, Mr Obama lashed out vehemently against Mr Ryan's budget proposal, calling it a "Trojan Horse" concealing "thinly veiled social Darwinism". Some commentators, impressed with Mr Obama's hysterical rhetoric, suggest that association with Mr Ryan will hurt Mr Romney's general-election chances. Here's John Heilemann of New York magazine:

Judging from Obama's speech yesterday, Romney-Ryan is the new Dole-Gingrich. Please recall that in 1996, Bill Clinton's campaign spent the spring hanging the controversial Speaker of the House around the septuagenarian senator's neck like a twenty-ton anvil—and in the process effectively won the general election six months early. Team Obama, like the rest of the Democratic Party, is confident that the same stratagem can work again. That they can win (and win decisively) the argument with the Republicans if they frame the election as a choice between the Ryan budget (and the philosophy animating it) and their vision of the fiscal future. The howling on the right over Obama's assault was not an unfortunate byproduct of the speech; it was the intended purpose. The president's people want to goad the Republicans into a posture of unified and feral support for Ryan, and thus yolk [sic] Romney to him ever more tightly. The sight of Ryan speaking at Romney's victory event in Wisconsin had tails wagging vigorously in Chicago; imagine a kennel at feeding time and you'll have a decent vision of what Obama's reelection HQ looked like last night.

“[Mr Romney has] very much lashed to Ryan and the House Republicans,” said David Axelrod, a top strategist for Mr. Obama. “They share an economic view and a view on the budget. By essentially embracing the framework of Ryan, Romney is also embracing the steps that would be necessary to implement it.”

By lashing Romney to Ryan's budget, Obama intends to lash him to the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Where Romney has purposefully refrained from filling in the details on his agenda, the Obama campaign intends to use Ryan's blueprint to fill them in on Romney's behalf.

Is all this "yoking" and "lashing" really so bad for Mr Romney? It's not so clear to me. Mr Heilemann describes Mr Obama's election team as a pack of happy dogs about to sup on raw Romney meat. As a habitue of dog parks, I find Mr Obama's incendiary language more akin to the posturing, threatened yap.

Unfortunately for Mr Obama, Mr Ryan is no Newt Gingrich. He is not a pompous, self-aggrandising bloviator in the grand southern style. He's a likeable, hardworking, detail-oriented, Midwestern wonk who just happens to be something of a looker. Moreover, Mr Ryan's conservatism largely eschews the odious cultural politics of social conservatives and focuses instead on a pragmatic, fiscally conservative market-oriented meliorism, the appeal of which is by no means limited to the hard right. He's an attractive politician offering an attractive comprehensive alternative to the administration's approach. And that's why it is a matter of urgent political necessity for Mr Obama to try to smear Mr Ryan's budget as a recipe for brutal, devil-take-the-hindmost injustice.

Indeed, the Ryan/Obama dialectic seems to me to represent a remarkable reversal of the usual pattern of American politics: Democrats offer serious, substantive policy proposal; Republicans respond with unhinged culture-war politics. This is not so surprising if one grasps that the Democrats are profoundly conservative about the New Deal/Great Society social-insurance state, upon which Obamacare is a sort of capstone. The New Deal is the modern Democratic Party's founding event, and the persistence of its institutions in their traditional mode is a matter of identity and meaning on the left as much as it is a matter of practical policy. I think that's why Democrats seem to relish linking Mr Romney's fate to Mr Ryan's. It offers Mr Obama and his supporters the chance to fight a culture war on their hallowed home ground. But should they be so sure they'll win?

Mr Ryan is ready and able to debate the substance of public policy in a way only a few members of congress, left or right, can match. He's become a de facto leader of the GOP not because he's a big idea man in the Gingrich mould, but rather because he's extraordinarily capable of approaching America's big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals. After Mr Obama's Tuesday speech, Mr Ryan's office released a sharp, systematic rebuttal on Facebook. You don't have to agree with Mr Ryan's politics to see the substance here. Although he is at least Mr Ryan's equal as a debater and policy wonk, Mr Obama has not and will not win every fight he picks with him. Mr Obama seems to be gambling on the assumption he is safely encamped on the moral high ground, and can therefore lose a good few battles and nevertheless win the war.

It's a war I'd like to see. Mr Romney should proceed with his dalliance with Mr Ryan, and challenge Mr Obama not only on practical policy particulars, but to be bold and challenge his claim to the moral high ground. This may well be a hill Mr Romney is destined to die upon, as the baiting Democrats evidently believe. If so, it would be a glorious death. But if not—if he can manage to take the high ground—he'll have overturned much more than Obamacare.

W.W., I usually expect more thought challenging articles than this. Instead of claiming this Mr. Ryan is a politician who's "extraordinarily capable of approaching America's big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals," why don't you prove it? I don't see much evidence to support your assertion here.

Mr. Ryan's odious form of irresponsible politics can best be seen in his plan to dramatically lower taxes on the wealthy, gut social programs, and offer vague, detail-lacking promises to find other sources of revenue. He's an Ayn Rand toting Social Darwinist with a big grin. Mr. Obama is right to call him out it.

Picking Ryan for VP will drive away those Independents who might have given Romney the benefit of the doubt for a closet moderation.

Ryan loves Ayn Rand, the B-Movie Nietzsche, whose worship of an infantile selfishness ought to make her and her followers anathema to anyone who believes that this country is based on Judeo-Christian values.

Who on earth wrote this article? Does he have the slightest idea what he's talking about? Am I feeding on old news, or did Ryan's budget hinge on nothing but unspecified closed tax loopholes and mystical economic gains? Yet the author praises Ryan for his DETAILED proposals? What?!?

You know, you might have a point if the Ryan budget was an actual intelligently thought-out well constructed policy. But when you promise to balance the budget through closing loopholes, and then don't mention a single one?

Yeah, this isn't one side being culture warriors and one side being reasonable. It's two nerds bitterly arguing about whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better - a battle of fantasies.

Here's a nice bit on Ryan's budget from political scientist Johnathan Bernstein over at his blog (http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/). I couldn't agree more with this, and I think it significantly calls into question WW's statement that Ryan is "extraordinarily capable of approaching America's big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals".

No, what I think is notable about Ryan is how fraudulent his budgets are. And that's why I'd suggest 3.75 as the second key number. That's the target as a percentage of GDP, under Ryan, for the entire government other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, by 2050. Since Ryan has separately objected to cuts in the military below 4% of GDP, it means that Ryan would theoretically not be able to meet his own target, even if he shut down student loans, FEMA, NASA and the National Weather Service, the FBI and federal prisons, all immigration enforcement, the FDA and other food safety programs, air traffic control, and more. Including programs for veterans. Veterans!

The problem with Ryan isn't that he's going after poor people; Democrats and Republicans could have an honest debate about where the tax burden should fall and how large the safety net should be. The problem with Ryan is that his numbers -- his $4.6T and his 3.75 -- are just phony. He has no intention of producing $4.6T in revenues, and no intention of shutting down those programs (which, remember, still don't do the trick if he wants to protect military spending from any cuts), but he wants the credit for being serious about deficit reduction. He's not serious. The numbers don't add up. He's peddling a fraud. And that's why $4.6T and 3.75 are all you need to know about Paul Ryan.

Krugman says that Ryan's numbers are a fraud. That he doesn't get the savings he asserts and that the budget is better thought of as a simple transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. I haven't run the numbers myself because I have been busy calculating the cost of Gingrich's moonbase, but I trust Krugman's numbers at least as much as W.W.'s opinionating. Perhaps more.

"Mr Ryan's conservatism largely eschews the odious cultural politics of social conservatives and focuses instead on a pragmatic, fiscally conservative market-oriented meliorism, the appeal of which is by no means limited to the hard right."

Are you kidding? How is slashing taxes for wealthy individuals who are paying historically low taxes and, might I add, low taxes compared to other industrialized nations, while cutting spending on the poor not "culture politics"?

How is giving in to Grover Norquist and refusing to balance the budget with BOTH cuts and modest tax increases "pragmatic?"

How is slashing government spending on Universities, research and job-training "market-oriented?"

And I strongly object to the whole premise. Yes, the government frog-marches a lot of things through an unwilling populace. E.g. integration of schools (both in the North and the South). Civil rights and equality before the law are not popularity contests.

" He's become a de facto leader of the GOP not because he's a big idea man in the Gingrich mold, but rather because he's extraordinarily capable of approaching America's big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals. "

He's capable of making detailed policy proposals, but your own newspaper denies that they are coherent.

W.W., and after I defended you yesterday on your Sexy Spies post. I know you really want a serious proposal from someone for slashing spending and getting the countries finances under control. I do too, as a used-to-be liberal now centerist moderate (is that a shift?), I think we need big cuts AND big revenue enhancements. I'm tired of arguing and just want to do something that works (and get rid of the 2 party system while we're at it.) But Ryan's proposal ain't it. It's as nebulous as can be on what spending cuts would be made, but gets pretty specific in what tax cuts he'd like. I don't really understand why he's getting so much credit as being one of the right's new serious intellectuals. He must be good with powerpoints and charts. You read the stuff, and there's nothing concrete there but tax cuts, and then unspecified spending cuts and closing loopholes. Unserious.

Wait, you mentioned "He's a likeable, hardworking, detail-oriented, Midwestern wonk who just happens to be something of a looker." He couldn't be another Sexy Spy, could he?

It's a demonstration of how silly American politics has become that he's considered a 'fiscal hawk'. He's implicated in all of the worst excesses of the Bush years. Presumably, if you were to ask him now, he'd admit at least two of those votes were deeply mistaken. Yet, still in government, he'd like to cut the deficit he helped wildly expand by slashing the safety net for the poorest in society. Honestly, if the Democrats can't score in this open goal, then they truly are beyond redemption*.

The problem with Ryan's plan is that most of the hard choices, which tax expenditures to cut and entitlement reforms, are left unspecified. The CBO was told to assume the tax cuts would not lead to massive revenue decreases, and so they scored it that way. Having a different vision is fine, but you aren't a courageous leader making hard choices when you don't name any of your hard choices.

"because he's extraordinarily capable of approaching America's big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals"
This so far off the mark that I wonder how it passed even rudimentary fact checking, if it did. The so called budget proposal does not outline how spending is to be cut and projects a ludicrously high growth rate to recover its deficit causing and very definite tax cut measures for the 1%.
Just Google Ryan Krugman and follow links. Here is an example of what you will find:
"The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion. "

By invoking the name of Ayn Rand in a non-ironic setting you have summoned forth the following quote from its slumber:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Is it me or does this article seem like sort of sychophantic rant in favour of Mr Ryan, I don't have any particular alliances, but I find the point blank refusal of Republicans to entertain the idea of raising any taxes as unforgivable (maybe bad memories of Bush I), forget all the other issues, it is inconceivable that they would not consider raising marginal taxes from their currently historical low